


The Shore’s New Law

by mehenisms



Series: Queen of Hearts [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Creepy stalking behavior at points, Criminal Behavior, Depending on how linear and long I make this it may contain sexual scenes later on, F/F, Gen, Generally bad stuff but it’s the space Wild West ok its not gonna be rainbows and unicorns, Guess what! I’m just going to do CW at the beginning of every chapter lmao, Positive relationship growth too though, Psychic Violence, Relationship struggles sometimes, Sometimes excessive violence, Suggestive content and sexual language, Takes place during the Forsaken era, The Dreaming City comes in later, This is NOT a sfw fic, This is becoming more of a trigger warning list than tags, canon typical death, interspecies camaraderie, manhunts, many near-death experiences, oh lots of cursing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22294666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mehenisms/pseuds/mehenisms
Summary: Ikora refuses to stop arming Guardians against the Reef after Cayde’s murder, and gets herself exiled from the Last City because of it. In the midst of her psychotic grief, she makes her way to the Tangled Shore and carves out a new life for herself with her teeth.Also known as: What if Ikora Rey took on the role of the player-Guardian during the events of Forsaken?
Relationships: Cayde-6/Ikora Rey/Zavala, Ikora Rey/Petra Venj
Series: Queen of Hearts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604797
Kudos: 17





	1. Prologue

“ _Cowardice_ ,” Ikora hissed for what had to be the hundredth time, her shoulders raised, feet spread apart, hands balled into fists. Her heart beat fast; her Light was a solar flare. In her eyes Zavala saw wildfires, and he knew she would burn him down with her. 

“Your insubordination shall _not_ stand.” The words crept from Zavala’s mouth, monotone and bitter. How stalwart, still, and soft he was in the face of destruction. How quiet his words. How steady he seemed. Out of all those feelings, he only knew stillness in that moment. And he would be still as his world continued to crumble around him – until it was time to move. Action or inaction, he knew would be filled with regret either way.

It would not be the last time they fought.

\---------------------------------------

Each morning since Cayde’s death, Ikora rose from nightmare-plagued half-sleep and clothed herself in pink, purple, red, and gold. Each morning she heard the whisper of cunning temptation as she shouldered her robes, and each morning she brushed bare hands with proud strength as she tugged on her gauntlets. As she laced up her boots, purposeful fate promised to walk with her every step of the way, and in the click of her belt’s buckle she knew the haughty declaration of immutability and embraced it as her own.

With each murmured “For Cayde” as she looked into the eyes of Guardians in whom she saw herself, she knew gentle grief’s soft caress, and only a breath later, jealousy’s selfish twinge as she pressed keycards marked with hastily written coordinates into the hands of would-be prince-slayers. As they trekked off toward the Vanguard armory, the air would be pressed from her lungs by fear from where it had been resting dormant in her chest, and when she watched the thrusters of jumpships come ablaze as they swung out from the hangar bay, swept around the Tower with a flourish as if to say “Wait for my victory”, and rocket out beyond the cloudy atmosphere, fiery anger seized her heart in its hand and squeezed until it hurt.

On the day of her exile, that red-hot anger was all that kept her heart beating. With every pulse, her fire was renewed, and with every word spoken to decry her actions she felt sickened determination rise in her throat like bile, but furious pride told her to bite her tongue. _Shouting down a crowd will not change this,_ it hissed, _but perhaps action will continue to deliver a message._

In the chaos of the day, no one had noticed a decorated little Ghost finding its way to where Cayde’s cloak hung above his alcove in the hangar, or how it transmatted the garment away into an unseen inventory before it disappeared into subspace. And so no one knew that Ikora held the ragged scrap of scorched brown and mud-red fabric in her lap as she guided her ship out of the hangar and over the City for perhaps the last time. As she tightened her grip on the controls of her jumpship, she did not look out over the buildings far below alongside her little Ghost, nor did she gaze at the Traveler as they passed along the edge of its floating shards and lightning-stricken interior. She turned her gaze upward to the reddening sky, and far beyond that, the ring of wreckage and stone that composed the Reef. And she felt both a warmth in her core and a shiver down her spine, and neither had names as she knew them.

Later she would dub this the touch of freedom coaxing her beyond what she knew, and holding her hand as she broke orbit.


	2. What Did You Do?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ikora aimed down her scout rifle’s scope to find eight creatures standing in a line, Eliksni in posture but seemingly deformed and rotting. But this was not the time or place, surely--?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: Brief mentions of throat-cutting, brief mentions of strangling, brief description of head trauma/throwing knife injury, canon-typical violence

Ikora, in her paranoia, had begun to pack her jumpship well in advance of her sentence. She had not seen this turn of events hurtling toward her in any specifics, but she had sworn that she would run headlong into whatever was coming for her because of her actions. She was nothing if not responsible, at least for her own choices. She had neglected some of her Vanguard-given duties in the last few months of her time in the Tower, but everyone has their faults - hers were simply excessive grief and untreated psychosis, she mused bitterly as she clicked her last belt into place.

As an Exile of the City, she would no longer bear its symbolism, at least not in full: She wore her typical padded leggings, scuffed and faded plate armor from her shoulders to her waist, her well-worn boots, and a dusty old cloak with no patterning. Her “new” gauntlets and bracers were scuffed and plain, and her helmet would be the only thing that would look at all like it was City-made, but even that had years of use plain to see all over. This would be typical on the Tangled Shore. She was unmarked and held no visible allegiance, having supposedly scavenged, built, or revitalized everything she had. This was the one favor she would do for the Tower. For Zavala.

A plain set of throwing knives hung at her side from the built-in sheathes of a discarded Hunter belt, and in one of the belt’s pouches she kept a deck of playing cards – Cayde’s go-to deck, to be specific. He had said they always favored him in every game. Surely Zavala wouldn’t miss a deck of cards – though at this point, she would be hard-pressed to care – and perhaps they would bring her a little favor, too. This was all just a game, after all, and she would go so far as to overturn the table to make sure Uldren didn’t win if that’s what it took.

By her command, her Ghost transmaterialized her onto a desolate asteroid before taking control of the ship to find a quiet place to set it down. She strode across its uneven and hollow surface and looked around, scout rifle in hand, to take in what there was to see. There admittedly wasn’t much: The wreckage of Fallen Skiffs from long ago, all certainly picked clean by now, some dust-covered corpses struggling to rot in the low atmosphere, and caves, pockmarks, and craters all around her on different levels along the sloping and beat-up asteroid. She would have to dig deep to survive here: She could hold territory with ease (if her time in the Crucible or the wilds of Venus hadn’t taught her that, then the Red War certainly had) but even the best warrior can be easily overwhelmed if she does not remember to keep track of every in and out around her, and there was no shortage of hiding places and holes to crawl out of here.

The remains of a holding pod from the Prison of Elders drew her eye, as raw, darkly-colored Ether still hissed quietly from a tank on the side. How interesting that the mechanisms had not been scavenged yet – that was still-functioning Eliksni-Awoken hybrid technology, and surely could be useful or fetch a high price for almost anyone living here on the Shore. A brief examination of the pod cleared it of any signs of its inhabitant for some time now; her tracking was rusty, but Ikora knew what to look for. She’d spent enough time with Hunters; if she had forgotten everything she’d learned, she’d never have heard the end of it, were any of her Hunters still...around.

Of course, her heightened senses were a great help in the wilds; being a psychic means understanding the marks every living thing leaves on the world around it, as well as being able to keep track of individual energy signatures. Everything and everyone was different in how they looked and felt on the metaphysical plane, and Ikora was no stranger to it all. She’d been doing this for centuries now after all, albeit under the influence of medication to suppress aspects of her abilities. In her younger years, she had occasionally grown overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information she could take in and all the places she could go while still standing in one place, and so Tower medical staff had recommended psychic suppressants in conjunction with her antipsychotics to aid her control over her abilities. Admittedly, she hadn’t taken any of her medication for some time, but thankfully the worst her unbridled power could do right now was give her a headache. She was too alert to lose herself to energy swells or bodiless whispers, however much they tugged at the edge of her mind, and the dull ache behind her eyes was grounding.

Continuing her trek onward, she made a mental note for her Ghost to mark the location of the pod for later, just in case she needed some good scrap or a sample of dark Ether. As it was, she didn’t have the time or place to keep either of those things now, but she’d stake somewhere out soon enough. She had nowhere else to go, after all, and this place was a haven for misfits and outcasts if they knew how to protect themselves. Ikora had no doubt she would stick out like a sore thumb, not because she couldn’t handle wandering the criminal underworld or interrogating backstabbing aliens, but because she could likely handle them _too_ well. She had crossed her fair share of gangs and corrupt factions back in her early days as a Crucible Champion and lived to keep those secrets, but not without learning how to get out of a pinch – not to mention centuries spent as the first Vanguard Spymaster. All she could hope for was that no one would out her as a Lightbearer straight away.

Directly ahead, she spotted an encampment of sorts, set up with no attempt to hide just outside an Eliksni-style port hatch. An outpost, or a particularly ballsy gang? Either way, that hatch was the only way forward that promised a hint of civilization (she’d map out the cave systems if she had to, but she doubted she’d find Uldren sitting pretty in the belly of a carved-out asteroid) and she needed to get through. The tattered banners strung up and fluttering as the asteroid shifted in its orbit were Eliksni in style, but held no obvious markings to define a House affiliation – Ikora had to assume these were either exiles or small-time criminals since they weren’t claiming the Dusk symbol, assuming they were Eliksni at all. With any luck, the camp’s inhabitants would be away and she could stroll through, have her Ghost hack a terminal to get through the hatch, and move on without incident. She couldn’t see any movement around the shoddy tents from so far back, but she let her finger hover over the trigger of her rifle anyway.

As she approached cautiously, she felt the quiet presence of her Ghost ease into the back of her mind again. A gentle _beep_ across their Light-made link told her that it had found a seemingly safe place to set the jumpship down, and a second soft _whirrrrrrr_ punctuated the highlighting of key targets or objects worth investigation on her HUD thanks to her Ghost’s proximity scanners. No visible life forms noted, both relieving and surprising. With great care, she crept forward across the edge of the camp and slowly toward the center, her only company the whistling pseudo-wind that buffeted the surface of the stone. She had no trouble reaching the terminal at the entrance of the hatch, and her Ghost felt safe enough to materialize and hack the console. As the hatch slid open with a hiss, there was still no sign of movement around them, and so after briefly sharing a look with her Ghost, Ikora continued into the cavern beyond the hatch as her little Light lit the way over her shoulder, momentarily bold in the face of no visible life signatures on it scanners.

Ikora could see the energy pulse of her Ghost’s scans stretching the length of the cave ahead of her every few seconds as it maintained that they were alone while she walked. With one hand still gripping her scout rifle, she approached a series of tall industrial-strength shelves set alongside the cave wall and brushed at a dust-covered box to reveal a faded yet curious New Monarchy symbol. The faction hadn’t used that iconography for some decades now.

“Smugglers,” Ikora said aloud as she took a few steps forward and ran her gloved palm against another shelved box, revealing the insignia of the Queen of the Reef beneath its dusty coating. “...Indiscriminate ones.”

After stowing her rifle, briefly sorting through a couple of crates with familiar markings, and pocketing what old supplies she thought could be useful in a pinch, Ikora moved on through the cavern. It was about as hospitable as a smuggler’s hideout could be: There were times in which she had to take a jump at the craggy rocks that stuck upward in her path and pull herself up and over ledges in order to continue forward, and there were equally jagged and sharp drop-offs in the stone around some corners, likely to catch thieves - or particularly dimwitted crewmen - off-guard. This should be simple terrain for Eliksni to cross, as they have been known to climb inverted surfaces with ease, and even most ground-based species in the system had technology to aid them in traversing such roadblocks; Ikora couldn’t help but wonder why more elaborate traps and trickery were not implemented here if any of these goods were considered valuable to Shore inhabitants. Maybe they weren’t and this was simply a survivalist stockpile, maybe they didn’t have the resources to invest in this cavern, or maybe they simply hadn’t thought of it.

Either way, she would be back to pick this place clean.

As she approached another Eliksni-style hatch at the end of the cavern and had her Ghost hack the terminal, Ikora readied her rifle. She didn’t need her Ghost’s scans to sense movement on the other side of the door.

_Get out of sight as soon as it clicks._ Over her metaphysical Light bond with her Ghost, she received a soft _whee-oh_ of acknowledgement accompanied by a small shiver down her spine. Within a few more seconds, the hatch locks clicked out of place, her Ghost transmatted away, and she was left with her rifle raised so she could easily aim down the scope if needed. She stood in place for a moment, watching and listening for any signs of an ambush or hidden enemies, but a brief sweep left to right and back again yielded nothing except the prone, twitching forms of Dregs clutching desperately at deep slashes on their throats.

The hiss of Ether and a furious shriek drew Ikora's attention ahead and to the left, to a cobbled-together metal hut painted with Eliksni symbols meant to warn off intruders. As she crept along the outer wall, her Ghost alerted her to what sounded like a struggle with a low _whoo-oo,_ and amplified the sound as it gave off a scanner pulse for Ikora to view on her HUD. One Eliksni, one humanoid, close-quarters...unarmed combat? With a quick breath, Ikora took a step into the open side of the hut, rifle aimed at head-height.

As quickly as Ikora had appeared, the cloaked figure seemingly strangling a Vandal dropped one hand to their hip, drew a sidearm, and aimed directly at Ikora’s helmet, their other arm still wrapped tightly around the Vandal’s neck. Ikora caught the gleam of a knife pressed hard between chinks in the Vandal’s carapace in the low light just before she heard the stranger’s voice and stopped in her tracks.

“Walk away, Lightbearer. This is a matter of the safety of the Reef and its Awoken people.”

Ikora’s eyes grew wide with surprise behind her visor. “Petra Venj?”

“...Rey?!”

For just a second, Petra relaxed her grip on the Vandal and lowered her sidearm, and that was long enough. The Vandal flung themself free of Petra’s chokehold and leapt at the closest wall to climb above both their heads, screeching all the while. The bluish-white Ether still hissing from the Vandal’s blade-punctured tank had created a haze in the hut, and Petra cursed under her breath as she holstered her gun and braced herself, knife in hand, her pointed ears twitching under her hood as she listened.

Not a moment later, the Vandal, having retrieved their discarded shock dagger from where it has been flung against the wall before crawling up to the roof, let themself fall just above Petra with a bloodcurdling scream as they twisted midair to drive the dagger down onto her head. Quick and clever as ever, she sidestepped the attack, took a breath, waited a beat, drew her arm back, then brought it forward and released her knife as she exhaled. The Vandal had stood upright only long enough to shriek and fall back to the compacted dirt floor as the blade connected with one of their inner eyes and lodged deeply in their brain.

Ikora let out a long sigh she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and, with one last affirmative chirrup from her Ghost, lowered her weapon. Petra wasted no time kneeling and tugging her blade free from the Vandal’s head before she rose and spun on her heel to face Ikora.

“What are you doing here? I thought I felt your Light, but I didn’t think--”

A dry chuckle was muffled by Ikora’s helmet. “You haven’t heard yet.”

Even through the cloudy Ether in the air, Ikora could see the glow of Petra’s one good eye narrow ever so slightly as she took a small step forward.

“I’d make fun, but...?”

“’What’d you do, Rey?’” Ikora let a hint of a mocking tone slip into her voice as she mimicked Petra’s Reef accent, only barely distinguishable through the distortion of her helmet’s vocalizer. She couldn’t finish the joke, though, and so the faint whistle of the asteroid’s pseudo-wind outside the hut set the mood for her.

The two women stared at one another in silence for a few minutes, looking each other over. Petra wore her typical Corsair bodysuit, shoulder pads, and belt, on which hung her knife and sidearm holsters and the sash that designated her as a Queensguard, as well as a plain grey cloak lightly stained with the steel-colored blood of the band of Eliksni she’d just killed. Ikora had always thought it curious that Petra, as the Queen’s Wrath, had never really had anything aside from a badge to set her apart from the average Corsair in uniform – at least not to Ikora’s own knowledge. It’s highly likely that she could have an alternate uniform for other occasions; surely a pressure suit would be helpful ( if not lacking in defense ) in environments like this .

“...Nice armor,” Petra mused, letting her lips curl into a halfhearted smile as she met Ikora’s eyes through her visor.

“Nice cloak,” Ikora responded in kind.

“We can’t stay here. There’ll be more where these came from, and soon.” Petra jerked her head back toward the dead Vandal behind her. “I didn’t get the information I needed, but...I think I know somewhere we can.” She sighed, and her shoulders slumped forward just enough for Ikora to notice. “Unfortunately.”

Without another word, Petra gently pushed past Ikora, stepped out of the hut, and began to stalk across the open air toward a series of caves beneath a far ridge buffeted by the wind, pulling her cloak tighter around her as she went. Ikora’s Ghost appeared long enough to scan Ikora’s vital signs, stare after Petra, and exchange a look with its Guardian before phasing back into the safety of subspace as Ikora started after her Awoken friend.

She had just caught up when Petra stopped in her tracks. Ikora was about to inquire about the slight head tilts Petra was exhibiting before she sensed a change herself. Her Ghost put out a scanner pulse and found nothing, but energy readings all around them were spiking regardless – and Ikora could not figure out what exactly she was feeling. A cold sense of dread? Foreboding, as though something were about to go terribly wrong?

She shuddered as if from a chill and raised her rifle as a high-pitched sound, almost like a whistle or siren, suddenly drowned out the wind all around them. Petra had her sidearm drawn and braced herself as she shouted over the noise: “On the ridge!”

Ikora quickly aimed down her scout rifle’s sight to find eight creatures standing in a line, Eliksni in posture but seemingly deformed and rotting. She knew, from the footage retrieved from Sundance’s shell, that these were the so-called Barons responsible for Cayde’s death, and upon seeing them she couldn’t help but work her jaw. This was not the time or place, surely--

“You... _dead thing_ ,” called out the tallest figure in the middle of the group as it raised a staff, “perhaps you...will give us a better fight than _Cayde-Six_.” As it slammed the butt of its staff to the ground, the smaller figures around it dissipated in clouds of what looked like lightning and bluish-black smoke, and within seconds, Ikora’s sights were smothered with the same smog. She could hardly hear Petra shouting only a few feet to her right as snarls and shrieks began to sound off all around them. Were it not for her Ghost’s scanner pulses, she wouldn’t have been able to see the Eliksni-like figures screaming from within the haze.

After a few seconds of both of them taking potshots into the crackling fog, Petra reached out and found Ikora’s hand on her rifle, tore it free from the stock, and held tight to Ikora as she began to pull her through the smoke. Ikora, balancing her rifle in her other hand, kept the creatures at bay as Petra blindly dragged her to safety toward the far caverns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple things:
> 
> 1) I don’t like Ophiuchus in Bungie’s lore so I’m leaving her Ghost ambiguous and probably entirely voiceless because I can  
> 2) Obviously the main storyline is going to be parallel to Forsaken’s story but I plan on making small edits or changing/adding to situations slightly as needed for storytelling purposes   
> 3) I have not written combat in a long time so please be gentle
> 
> Hope you enjoy; next chapter hopefully coming soon!


	3. Landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a deep huff of breath, Petra spoke again, satisfied. “Welcome to the Thieves’ Landing.”

As the two women reached the yawning mouth of a cave beneath the ridge, Petra released Ikora’s hand and stopped at the edge of a sharp drop-off where the asteroid had been carved out - whether time, the elements, or something else had done it was unclear, but the next even-footing was a solid seven feet below the overhang, and that dropped off to another jutting edge, too. The fall would be damaging, but perhaps climbing down would be too slow when pursued by undead aliens intent on...eating them, or sacrificing them, or something--

Ikora, still firing at the creatures giving chase in their swathes of dark smoke, took a sharp step back. This alone wouldn’t have been enough to send them both tumbling down over the jagged stone cliff, but it brought them so close together that the kickback from her rifle would. Petra stumbled as Ikora unexpectedly bumped into her, and as she tripped Ikora staggered back over the edge after her.   
  
Petra could imagine a number of scenarios that would cut her hunt short: Death by Barons, death by Uldren, death by crime syndicate orders. Death by barfight, even. Never had she imagined breaking a bone would sideline her from this fight, and in the face of that now, as she fell, she decided it would be the most boring way to end her involvement. 

Thankfully, even as she tumbled alongside her, Ikora recognized Petra’s mortality. Risking a fracture herself, Ikora caught the edge of a half-crumbled stone with her heel and pushed off as hard as she could – only to grab Petra by the belt and pull her into a close embrace, her back now between Petra and the fast-approaching ground.   
  
Seconds later, the impact knocked the breath from Ikora’s lungs. She slid a few feet along the rocky ground, grateful for the sturdy plasteel plating of her armor, and Petra lifted her head and blinked down at her briefly as she processed what happened. Ikora inhaled with a hiss and blinked back from behind her visor before speaking, her voice strained.

“I’d make a joke, but--!”

That spurred Petra back to action. Pushing herself to her feet, she looked over her shoulder to see streaks of the dark smoke arcing down from one cliff edge to the next in pursuit, and quickly offered Ikora a hand. As she hauled Ikora to her feet rather unceremoniously, she gritted her sharp fangs together as she contemplated the best course through the caverns. Would they be pursued there, since one of them was a Guardian? Close quarters with a Lightbearer is a very dangerous game – unless they had another Weapon of Sorrow. The odds of Fikrul giving one to his mindless pawns was low, though--

Having scooped up her rifle again, Ikora aimed at the shrieking clouds as they came closer. “Petra-- Petra, let’s move!” And again, Petra grabbed at her wrist, tore it free of her gun, and began to pull her into the caves. 

This time, Ikora abandoned her effort to pick off individuals in the pursuing smoke streaks and, after shouldering her rifle, set herself to sprinting at Petra’s side instead of being haphazardly dragged behind her. Upon tugging her wrist free from Petra’s vice grip, Ikora shared a peripheral glance with Petra and in that moment, they came to a silent consensus: They were in this together, now. 

These caves were just as treacherous as the smugglers’ hideout – running through, a single misstep could end a life. So Ikora took initiative and picked up the pace to make the high jumps using her Light, and reach a hand down to snag Petra as she leapt at cliffsides in kind, just short of the edge. Hands clasped together, Ikora hauled her up and over rocky edges, and when steep drop-offs loomed before them, she took the leap, braced herself upon making a successful jump, and caught Petra’s arm to steady her as she followed suit. They continued this way, working in tandem to escape the billowing clouds of darkness chasing them, and kept running long after the clouds had turned to streaks, the streaks to wisps, and the wisps to nothingness.   
  
Ikora’s Ghost let out a buh-beep and she finally slowed to a stop, reaching out to stop Petra as well. Both wheezing, the two heaved in heavy breaths and rested for a few moments; Ikora’s Ghost assured her that they were no longer being pursued with scanner pulses on her HUD. After a long few moments of leaning against the wall of the cave to catch her breath, Petra finally broke the relative silence. 

“We can’t--” Petra took a breath, “Can’t stay here.” Ikora began to roll her shoulders and neck as though stretching. “I think I can find my way from here, but--”

“You think?”

“We’re deep under the surface of an asteroid, Rey; it’s not like there’s any landmarks or signs that say ‘Take a right to get to Thieves’ Landing’!” She paused to sigh and lower her eyes for a moment, seemingly in thought. When she began again, her tone was more even. “Every cave leads to somewhere, though, and most of these are probably tunnels. Once we find our way to the outside, I can get us where we need to go.”

A moment of silence lingered between them as they locked eyes. Swallowing her doubts, Ikora nodded once, swept her hand out to the side as if to say after you, and fell into step with Petra as she started deeper into the cave. 

“So....”

“Are you going to tell me why you’re here, Rey? How you’re here? You’re--”

“Relieved of duty,” Ikora interrupted, her flat tone laced with thinly-veiled anger. She set her jaw and stared ahead. “I’m here to do what needs to be done.”

Brow furrowed, Petra turned to look at Ikora quizzically as they walked, studying her with a flash of concern. Ikora certainly wasn’t dressed like a typical Warlock, and she bore no City insignia. Was this a sanctioned op...?

The quiet returned long enough for Ikora to decide to change the subject. 

“Tell me what you know about those Eliksni.”

Petra huffed out a heavy breath and looked down at the rocky cave floor, seemingly watching her step, though she seemed to be getting deeper and deeper in thought as they went. “They’re called ‘Scorn’,” she began after a few contemplative seconds, “and they’re not Eliksni. Not anymore, at least.”

Ikora looked over at her, head cocked slightly as she waited for Petra to elaborate.

Another small sigh. “The figure you saw on the ridge calls himself Fikrul, but we – the Awoken – call him The Fanatic. He leads them – raises them from the dead. They’re mindless, and violent; seemingly at the whim of the Fanatic and his Barons.”

“So almost like a rogue House,” Ikora mused aloud, choosing to draw parallels to the Scorn’s Fallen roots instead of the Traveler and its Guardians, but Petra was already shaking her head. 

“Not quite. The Fanatic has it out for everyone and everything, Fallen included. For some reason, he’s latched onto the idea that the Fallen’s ‘machine gods’ are a weakness, and he’d just as soon see all Eliksni dead to raise again as Scorn. At least, that seems to be the case.”

With a slow nod, Ikora returned her eyes to the darkness ahead, dimly lit for a few yards by her Ghost’s flashlight as it hovered silently over her shoulder. Both women left each other to their thoughts as they traversed a short chasm in the rocky floor with measured jumps and outstretched hands. 

“What do they have to do with Uldren?” Ikora spat the name as they began to walk again, though she spoke quietly now. Petra visibly flinched; the echo of their footsteps suddenly seemed louder. Ikora kicked a pebble ahead of her with the toe of her boot as she waited for an answer. 

“It’s my fault.”

Ikora, maddened with grief but clinging to what she knew of her best friend, waited with as much patience as she could muster for a better explanation.

“The Prince--...Uldren was...afflicted after the Battle of Saturn. No one could find him, or even knew if he was still alive.” Petra took a deep breath, and blinked slowly in the low light. “The story as I know it,” she began again, “is that he crash-landed on Mars, and found his way to the Kings -- or Winter, or some other House, I don’t know – and found an Archon left for dead by Guardians. Somehow...somehow, he managed to resurrect it. At least, that’s what we gleaned from Guardian reports of a Reef ship marked with Kings insignia on Mars, and from Fikrul’s own ramblings in the Prison.” She let out a quiet scoff. “If Uldren ever had powers like those of the Queen, no one seemed to know it. 

“He came back to us after a time, going on and on about...about the Queen speaking to him. In his head.”

“She’s been known to speak to the Awoken in such ways before.” Ikora ignored Petra’s side-eyed glance. 

“Yes,” Petra responded cautiously, “but she’s...lost to us. The Techeuns have been searching for a way to reach her, wherever she is, since the Battle, with no luck. After all this time, why would she not have reached out before, and to someone aside from the weary Prince?”

“What did he claim to hear?”

“Her voice, telling him to ‘save her’.”

“From what?”

“Exactly.”

“He couldn’t tell you?”

“No. Just that there were ‘things he would have to do’. Ominous stuff, and not what the Awoken people needed at the time.”

“So you...?”

Petra dipped her head, but whether it was out of guilt or embarrassment, Ikora couldn’t tell. “Locked him in the Prison with the Barons, highest security clearance. We didn’t know they were affiliated at the time.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone. Flawless execution, Venj.”

Exasperated, Petra threw her hands up in defeat. “Well it would have been fine, if that four-eyed son of a bitch hadn’t gone off the rails when he did! Damn it all!”

When Ikora turned to look at her, Petra’s head was hung, and her shoulders slumped. She eventually looked up at Ikora, the glow of her iris and the flashlight beam illuminating the tears beading at the edge of her eye. When she spoke again, it was in stark contrast to the brief outburst she’d had before.

“I’m sorry, Ikora. I’m so sorry.”

After a moment of staring at Petra that seemed to last a lifetime, having seen the anguish on her face and heard the way her voice cracked just enough, Ikora turned away and looked down to find another pebble to kick ahead of them. The clattering of stone-on-stone was the only sound for a long while. 

Petra broke the long silence with a twitch of her ears and an audible, perky inhale. Her eyes open wide, she tilted her head as if to hear better. 

“We’re close to an out.” 

Renewed, she broke into a careful run, avoiding pitfalls as easily as breathing, and Ikora had to jog to catch up when Petra finally stopped at the yawning mouth of an opening in the cave. 

Before them the stone opened up into a drop-off that gave way to a massive cavern. Holes in its ‘ceiling’ betrayed the nature of the asteroid by showing wispy Reef dust and the glittering stars beyond, while the ground far below sprouted what looked something like grass or weeds in some spots, with brief patches of color here and there peeking out from between rocks. Stacked ‘buildings’ of scrap, seemingly Eliksni in origin, showed years of weathering but no sign of structural decay – so they must have been kept up well. The typical Eliksni symbolism marked walls and doorways as it often did in such places, though there were some symbols that Ikora did not recognize.   
  
With a deep huff of breath, Petra spoke again, satisfied. “Welcome to the Thieves’ Landing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience! I’ll get to work on a more fun bit soon - meeting Spider.
> 
> Formatting was done on my phone while with a bad signal, so if I need to fix or update this chapter later it’ll be after I return home from this weekend trip!


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